The campaign of San
Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris yesterday unveiled a web ad attacking
her opponent in the November election, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley.

Democrat Harris and
Republican Cooley won their parties’ respective nominations for attorney
general in the June 8 primary and will face off in the Nov. 2 general election
to succeed gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

In the ad, entitled “3
Questions for Steve Cooley,” the Harris campaign reiterated themes that it
sounded right after the election, signifying that it will attempt to deny
Cooley crossover Democratic support while questioning his prosecutorial record.

The ad, with soft music
and no voiceover to accompany the graphics, asks:

•“Why did Cooley shut
down the Environmental Crimes Unit in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s
Office?”

The issue regarding the
Environmental Crimes Unit dates back to 2003. As the ad notes, the then-head of
the unit, Richard Sullivan, was transferred to a post that put him in charge of
the office’s law library. The action came soon after higher-ups in the office
rejected proposed perjury charges against Newhall Land Co. in connection with
an endangered species dispute.

Cooley said at the time
that he closed the unit for budgetary reasons and that environmental cases
could be adequately handled elsewhere. He denied retaliating against Sullivan,
but said the lawyer “did a miserable job” on the Newhall case.

With respect to health
care reform, the ad declares Harris’ support and cites a Sacramento Bee
editorial from last March, criticizing Cooley and his GOP opponents for vowing
to “join the 13-state lawsuit” filed by Republican attorneys general against
the federal law that Republicans have dubbed “Obamacare.”

The quote, however, is
from the editorial and is not attributed directly to Cooley. And Cooley’s
campaign consultant, Kevin Spillane, took issue yesterday with the
characterization.

Cooley, he claimed, has
“expressed concerns” about the mandates in the legislation, but has not
committed to joining the lawsuit. If elected, Cooley “would consult with legal
experts, the staff of the Attorney General’s Office, and other state officials”
before deciding whether to seek to make the state a party to the litigation,
Spillane said.

The third question was a
reference to remarks by Cooley satirically questioning the value of initiatives
Jessica’s Law and Marsy’s Law. Cooley called the former “one of the most
ill-crafted, poorly written, ill-conceived pieces of legislation” and the
latter “a nice-sounding piece of junk,” citing them as examples of how measures
that do little to actually fight crime an be approved at the ballot box with a
sympathy-evoking title and a great deal of campaign money.

Spillane said this was
“not a substantive point,” but a cynical appeal to female voters, and that Cooley
would be happy to “match his record as a prosecutor...against Harris’ any day
of the week,” particularly with regard to sex crimes and child abuse. Harris’
“lame web ad,” he said, was a diversion from the negative publicity she has
been attracting as a result of criticism of her own performance as district
attorney.